Script Hunt: Creating and Raffling a Supernatural Archive
A page from Eric Kripke’s director’s copy of Supernatural 4.22 “Lucifer Rising”, with his handwritten notes in the margin and on the Beautiful Room diagram. This script is one of the prizes available in our current raffle.
“If you’re interested in writing, the best thing you can do is read scripts.”
– Russell T. Davies when he announced a massive update to the BBC Script Library’s Whoniverse collection1
For the past five years, a small group of Supernatural fans have been hunting down the scripts, call sheets, casting sides, and anything they could get their hands on related to writing and filming the longest running science fiction show in American television. In the true spirit of the Supernatural family, their objective of collecting, then making available to the public, these unique glimpses into the magic of Supernatural‘s longevity quickly took on the additional goal of raising money for charity. Their current charity raffle, which runs through June 30, 2024, may be their largest effort yet. There are over 40 prizes, initially inspired by Eric Kripke’s donation of 7 Supernatural scripts, then quickly supplemented by scripts from Robbie Thompson (showrunner, The Winchesters) and the lead creative team of Gotham Knights.
I caught up with the members of the @SPNScriptHunt team and their spokescooler, @TheGreenCooler, to learn how their script hunting project got started, and how fans can enter the current raffle to get a piece of Supernatural‘s history for themselves. I am honored to share the story of the Script Hunt team’s generosity and success.
Q: How and when did the “hunt” for Supernatural scripts begin?
When a handful of script nerds decided to pool their funds to try to win a blue draft of Supernatural‘s episode “Ouroboros” (14.14) from an eBay auction in May 2019, the Supernatural fandom collectively had access to only six scripts from five episodes and a single network outline. Those seven documents (some of which were poor quality scans or missing pages) had been made available online over time through TV script or social media sites.
Then “Red Meat” (11.17) and “Tombstone” (13.06) went up for auction on the same day. The chaos of coordinating bidders led to the creation of the SPN ScriptHunt Discord bidding server to organize buying scripts. At first, it was just a small number of us, but our numbers grew rapidly to a regular group of donors once the server was established.
Five years later, we are ending the “Script Hunt” project with a total of 163 scripts from 147 episodes, casting sides from 50+ episodes, 50+ call sheets, arenas (general descriptions of the episodes’ plots) from 18 episodes, and other related documents. We bought over 100 of those scripts directly, and organized the donation of the rest. Everything we acquired has been scanned and made freely available for anyone to read online.
Q: How did the goal of creating a library of Supernatural scripts evolve into organizing raffles to raise money for charity?
We realized early on there would be an ownership problem for collectively bought scripts. We pooled our funds to buy scripts, but couldn’t split ownership. Once we scanned the scripts for the online public archives, we decided to raffle off the hard copies for charity. We didn’t keep any of the originals ourselves. Our solution is based on the fundraising model exemplified by Misha’s annual GISH campaigns, plus Jared, Jensen, and the rest of the cast’s commitment to supporting various charities.
We chose to raffle the scripts, rather than auction them, for a number of reasons. Small fandom-run auctions raise less money than raffles, and many nonprofits make it easy to set up this sort of fundraising campaign with a direct donation link, tax deduction information sent with donation confirmation, and a public running total of donations made. The low donation threshold for entry (typically $10 per raffle chance) also gives more people a chance to win. We’ve had multiple winners with fewer than five entries (and more than 20 entries, too).
By running the donations through trusted charity organizations rather than individuals, the fandom can feel secure knowing exactly where their funds are going, even if they have never interacted with ScriptHunt before.
Our goal was to raise at least as much for charity as we collectively paid to acquire the scripts. We haven’t been reimbursed for these purchases, or for the cost of getting them autographed. People attending fan conventions in the US, Canada, UK, and Europe donated most of the autographs, and apart from the cost of shipping the scripts to winners, we paid for the rest. All raffle proceeds are donated directly to the charities. The result is a lot of good done for charity, AND a massive library of scripts for the entire fandom to enjoy.
Since the founding of the project, many of the people who helped make it possible for us to collect so many scripts were regular contributors of small amounts. When we all work together, those small amounts can do huge things!
Q: Where were you able to find all those Supernatural scripts?
We would keep an eye on eBay. If any of the “usual suspects” in Vancouver or Los Angeles listed anything Supernatural related, we’d alert everyone in the server with what was available. We had a pledge form where people would tell us what they were interested in and how much they’d be willing to pay for an item. We’d get what we could afford. Sometimes we lost; sometimes we wouldn’t even bid on an item (usually charity auctions).
Q: How many scripts have you raffled for charity thus far?
Over the last two years, we’ve used this donation raffle model to do an incredible amount of good. In addition to our three big campaigns (listed below), we’ve donated items to a number of fundraisers run by others, including scripts from The Winchesters, Walker, Walker: Independence, Gotham Knights, and a rather unique script from The X-Files revival. In total, over 100 scripts, along with concept art, call sheets, and other miscellaneous related items – all of our collectively purchased hard copies and several more donated to us for this cause – have been given away to winners in Australia, Canada, Costa Rica, Croatia, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Israel, Luxembourg, Mexico, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and the United States.
Q: How much money has been raised by your script hunt?
All told, this is how the numbers shake out.
The SPN ScriptHunt “Big 3” Fundraisers/Raffles enabled $22,430.60 in donations:
$7,151 to The Trevor Project
$5,066 to World Central Kitchen
$10,213.60 to RIP Medical Debt, which abolished $1.18 million in medical debt for 621 people living in five states
$26,520.60 – The SPN ScriptHunt project total thus far, adding in several of our smaller fundraisers.
$17,028.50 – The amount raised by other groups’ fundraisers (SPN Family Giving, Attitudes in Reverse, Random Acts, Misha’s projects, plus The X-Files fandom fundraisers, to name just a few), to which we donated items.
$43,549.10 – Total raised for charitable causes!
Q: You said all of your collectively purchased and donated scripts were given away to winners of your first “Big 3” charity campaigns, so where did you get the scripts for this latest raffle?
When our RIP Medical Debt campaign closed in December, 2023, we thought we were done. After all, it’s hard to raffle off more scripts without the scripts! But when we posted our final total on Twitter, we received a reply from Supernatural‘s creator and first showrunner, Eric Kripke, in our notifications:
There’s no family like the #SPNFamily. Nice work. Next time, hit me up, I’ll get you some good ones.
— Eric Kripke (@therealKripke) January 13, 2024
Turns out, he really meant that!
PAKIGE! thank you @therealKripke ❤️
cc: @SPNScriptHunt pic.twitter.com/oC0el5NTrE— Mittens of Mishap (@MittensMorgul) March 26, 2024
With Eric Kripke’s donations, we were suddenly able to launch a fourth campaign! Since we never expected to be able to run another raffle, we’ve named this fundraiser, “Nothing really ends, does it?” after that famous line from Supernatural.
Scripts were donated by Eric (Supernatural, 7 scripts); Robbie Thompson (The Winchesters, 2 scripts); James Stoteraux, Chad Fiveash, and Natalie Abrams (Gotham Knights, 3 scripts); and folks in the Supernatural fandom. Thanks to TV Writing, we were able to include all the early pilots from the Supernatural cast’s subsequent CW shows (Walker, Walker: Independence, The Winchesters and Gotham Knights). Fans then helped us get these selections signed by cast, executive producers, and directors at the Creation Burbank (California), JIB 14 (Italy), and Crossroads 8 (UK) conventions.
Supernatural fans donated many of the other raffle prizes (fan artists, signed items, 2 copies of the art book, blu-ray box set, etc), as well. You can see a complete list of prizes on our raffle site. We’re now up to over 40 raffle prizes. It seems to keep growing!
Q: Why did you again chose Undue Medical Debt (renamed from RIP Medical Debt) to be the recipient of this latest fundraising campaign?
How Undue Medical Debt Works:
– You make a donation. They use data analytics to pinpoint the debt of those most in need: households that earn less than 4x the federal poverty level or whose debts are 5% or more of annual income.
– Undue Medical Debt buys medical debt at a steep discount. They buy debt in bundles, millions of dollars at a time at a fraction of the original cost. This means your donation relieves about 100x its value in medical debt.
– Together we wipe out medical debt. People across the country (US) receive letters that their debt has been erased. They have no tax consequences or penalties to consider. Just like that, they’re free of medical debt.
You can learn more about Undue Medical Debt on our SPNScriptHunt campaign page.
Q: How can someone enter this raffle to win a script?
Entering the raffle is an easy two-step process. First, you make a donation to Undue Medical Debt from our SPNScriptHunt campaign page. Every $10 donated to Undue Medical Debt gets you one entry into the script raffle, $20 for two entries, and so on. Your donation receipt serves as your “raffle ticket”. Download it from Undue Medical Debt’s thank you email (check your spam folder!), then submit it on our campaign page as proof of your donation.
All the scripts and other prizes, plus all the details about how to enter this raffle, are on our SPNScriptHunt site.
Includes my Directors Script for Lucifer Rising, loaded with notes, and super rare first draft of the #SPN pilot that we threw out and restarted, whole different Sam and Dean. What are you waiting for?? #SPNFamily https://t.co/2l1O7TcsxK
— Eric Kripke (@therealKripke) April 25, 2024
Q: After being so successful in both creating a Supernatural script archive and raising money for charity, why are you ending the SPN ScriptHunt?
No scripts that we didn’t already have in the collection have been available for sale on eBay since 2022, and the last private purchase we made was in Spring 2023. There just aren’t any more to buy right now. If that changes, we’re definitely willing to acquire what we can. After Eric Kripke donated these seven scripts, we did ask as many of the writers and actors as we could contact if they would like to contribute anything.
We’re still on the hunt for something from Walker, and Walker: Independence, but since Walker was in production until very recently, those are more difficult to get. Our attempts to get in contact with higher-level crew/writers like we have with Gotham Knights and The Winchesters have not yet met with success. We’d love to talk to anyone on the Walker/ WIndy production teams!
More details about how to enter this raffle are on our SPN ScriptHunt site. In Eric’s words (and he’s a pretty good writer!), “What are you waiting for??” The raffle closes June 30, 2024. Thanks in advance for your support and please help spread the word for us!
- m/russelltdavies63/p/C3W-GqYN2rp/ https://www.bbc.co.uk/writers/scripts/whoniverse/

- I’m the Co-Editor-in-Chief, Social Media Manager (Twitter, Facebook and Instagram), Live Tweet Moderator, reviewer and feature writer for The Winchester Family Business. Before joining the Supernatural Family, I worked for 22 years at a global consulting firm, but after years of long hours, high pressure and rigorous demands, I quit corporate life to raise my children. After my first Supernatural convention, I was driven to share my shock and awe in a two-part essay that The WFB was brave enough to post, and my second life calling, that of being a writer, began. My first published book, Fan Phenomena: The Twilight Saga was released in late 2016. Please share in my cross-fandom excitement by following its Facebook page @FanPhenomenaTwilight and my personal Twitter account @LSAngel2. You can read about this whole miraculous transition in my chapter in Family Don’t End With Blood, published in May 2017.